The Overview effect

I recently listened to Benjamin Grant in a podcast of Long Now. Benjamin goes into great depth about his fascination for the earth. While the whole episode is worth a listen, the thing that struck me the most is how many of the large NGO’s we know these days were founded in the early days of manned spaceflights. It was the Overview Effect that changed our perspective on how we live together on this planet as individuals and civilizations.

The Overview Effect serves as a metaphore for my work. If I want to make any progress in the work I do, it’s important to understand the neighboring fields too. It’s so much more then just making something beautiful. It can technically be very robust, but useless. The most advanced but incomprehensible for the person who needs to use it.

If you want to see where things are heading for, you need to zoom out and put things in perspective.